Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI

by John Cassidy

A sweeping, dramatic history of capitalism as seen through the eyes of its fiercest critics.

At a time when artificial intelligence, climate change, and inequality are raising fundamental questions about the economic system, Capitalism and Its Critics provides a kaleidoscopic history of global capitalism, from the East India Company to Apple. But here John Cassidy, a staff writer at The New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, adopts a bold new he tells the story through the eyes of the system’s critics. From the Haitian rebels who overthrew French colonial capitalism and the English Luddites who rebelled against early factory automation, to the Latin American dependistas , the international Wages for Housework campaign of the 1970s, and the modern degrowth movement, the absorbing narrative traverses the globe. It visits with familiar names―Smith, Marx, Luxemburg, Keynes, Polyani―but also focuses on many less familiar figures, including William Thompson, the Irish proto-socialist whose work influenced Marx; Flora Tristan, the French proponent of a universal labor union; John Hobson, the original theorist of imperialism; J. C. Kumarappa, the Indian exponent of Ghandian economics; Eric Williams, the Trinidadian author of a famous thesis on slavery and capitalism; Joan Robinson, the Cambridge economist and critic of the Cold War; and Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, the founding father of degrowth.

Blending rich biography, panoramic history, and lively exploration of economic theories, Capitalism and Its Critics is true big history that illuminates the deep roots of many of the most urgent issues of our time.

Genres: Economics, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Business, Audiobook, Philosophy

624 pages, Hardcover

First published May 13, 2025

About the author

John Cassidy is a journalist at The New Yorker and a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. He is the author of Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era and lives in New York City.

Reviews

[John Caleb Grenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

CAPITALISM AND ITS CRITICS
A HISTORY: FROM THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION TO AI
John Cassidy
@fsgbooks

Okay. Here goes. Here’s me telling y’all you should read a 624 page history book about capitalism by focusing on the main characters through history who most actively opposed it. Here’s me shooting my shot saying this thing is brilliant, vast and sweeping, yet profound in its plumbing, even intimate at times and, yes, accessible for those of us who don’t typically grab *sigh* 624 page history hardbacks about economics and politics that even throws a little math around here and there.

This book attracted me because it’s structured as a dynamic, sweeping narrative of history around how capitalism has changed how people interact with product and the workplace, all told by focusing on the stories and stances of people who most spoke out against the power structure keeping workers enslaved to jobs, keeping landowners and monopolies in charge of more and more massive fortunes, all in the name of growth and excess. The only place for excess to go is to go create more excess, isn’t it?

This goes into feminism, ecology, ethics, slavery, technology, election interference, monopolies of all kinds. We hear about Karl Marx, sure, and we hear about a lot of his critiques. We learn about the Nazi push against capitalism(!). I learned about Polanyi and Georgescu-Roegen. I bought more books…

What struck me as your typical non-businessy, STEM-jobbed, right brainy artsy bro, in the end, is that capitalism essentially functions like cancer. Throughout history, it’s mutated to continue to grow larger and more encompassing without bound or checkpoint stoppers, all with goals of serving its own cells (which thrive by the way). Eventually, the body it’s in though, the cells it shares a body with, can’t withstand something of infinite uncontrolled growth, though. “End stage” gets applied to things when death is imminent.

This glance into the insidious nature of how the global economy got to where it is, how much we have irreversibly done to our land, ecologies, our societies in the name of worldwide GDP growth while allowing such a small portion of our population to hoard so much of its wealth, tucked into global markets and overseas banks and networks to avoid taxation, thus undermining the initial purpose of having nation states and citizens at all—well. This book goes into all of it and I came out on the other side much more knowledgeable and feel that my further reading will be able to be more meaningful to me now.

Highly recommend this to anyone, at all.

[Marks54 · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fabulous historical review of economists and their theories of capitalism in terms of their criticisms of capitalism. There are over two dozen chapters, each focusing on one or two economists, all tied to an evolving presentation of the current state of capitalism. The timeline ranges from the beginnings of capitalism a la Adam Smith and Malthus up to the present day crises and economists such as Piketty. Along the way there are lesser known scholars and commentators whose stories are even more interesting than the well known titans like Smith or Keynes.

One of the strengths of the book is the story that Mr. Cassidy tells about what is driving the state of capitalism at a particular moment. While it is common for advocates of one view of markets or another to tout the strength of their view and claim that adopting it in total would solve capitalism’s problems, Cassidy does not adopt this approach. His view of the development and morphing of capitalism is one of tensions and conflicts among opposing forces. At a basic level, there is the continuing influence of technology and its effect of displacing workers and jobs while leading towards greater productivity and performance. But there are other continuing tensions as well. One involves the spread of capital into underdeveloped and more “peripheral” markets, evoking the huge discussion of imperialism, colonialization, and globalization that continues today with its debates over free trade versus protectionism (and tariffs). A third tension is between unconstrained free market capitalism and more managed market approaches in which government sets the rules and the market in response to conflicts becomes more adapted to local conditions. This is the tension that Cassidy focuses most upon, featuring the work of Karl Polanyi (The Great Transformation) and others. This is in my opinion the central tension driving the narrative. The push towards unfettered and ungoverned free market dynamics is the threat to global stability while the reactions to this push can be equally or more damaging in the directions of tariffs, autarky, and authoritarian government. Balancing conflicting currents appears to be crucial for progress (or at least the avoidance of crisis).

The above is just a start at interpretation and I could not possibly summarize this exceptional book.

[Jim Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s an old joke, quoted in this magisterial history of capitalism and its critics, that one can more easily imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. This got me to thinking that at his present juncture in world history, it is not an exaggeration to say that it may take the end of the first to finally destroy the second.

John Cassidy, a British-born journalist for the New Yorker magazine, has delivered a timely book about the point we have arrived at, 250 years since the Industrial Revolution first began to tear apart the social fabric in his homeland. The story is told through the critics of capitalism, from the Irish social reformer William Thompson (1775-1833) to modern day critics like Dani Rodrik and Wolfgang Streeck.

Each cf the first 27 chapters is devoted to one particular thinker, with Cassidy himself putting together his own conclusions in the final chapter. What emerges throughout is both capitalism’s unerring ability to reinvent itself in the face of crisis and the growing urgency for humanity to come up with a better organising principle for our material lives and the use of the planet’s finite resources.

A more comprehensive review follows. But of all the thinkers in the book the one I think got closest to the truth and was ahead of his time was the Austro-Hungarian philosopher Karl Polanyi, whose book ‘The Great Transformation’ was released in 1944 towards the end of the Second World War - the same year as another much more influential book, ‘The Road to Serfdom’ by his fellow countryman and ideological opposite, Alfred Hayek.

Polanyi said capitalism’s only two logical end points were either socialism or fascism. And it was the hypercapitalism unleashed by Hayek’s disciples in the 80s and 90s that has now opened the way to the fascism that Polanyi predicted.

God help us all.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Whew, Capitalism and Its Critics was quite the undertaking for a mid-summer read, but I'm so glad I stuck with it. John Cassidy has always been a New Yorker must-read for me; his writing is very approachable and geared towards readers without a degree in economics. This was good news for me, since I took 1 required Econ class in high school and never pursued the subject further.
Reading Capitalism and Its Critics is like taking an Econ overview with a very engaging professor. Starting in the 1700s with the East India Company and working its way to present day, Cassidy makes complicated topics easy to grasp. It's not an easy-breezy read, but anyone curious about how capitalism came to be the out of control beast it is today will get a lot out of this book. Cassidy briefly explains concepts so you get the jist without getting too in the weeds, which I appreciated.
Each chapter is focused on a different "critic" of capitalism throughout history. It was tempting to try to find a theory I agreed with the most, but it's all so much more complicated than that. Capitalism has been ruling our lives for hundreds of years and the fact that we still haven't figured out the best way to manage it is mind-boggling, but more understandable when you read the history.
I feel smarter for having read this, which is pretty much all you can ask for with this type of non-fiction book.

[Oleksandr Zholud · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a non-fiction that describes main steps in understanding what capital is and what its critics chiefly in the 19th and 20th centuries were saying. The selected critics are chiefly left-wing and therefore the book is biased this way, even if in describing main ideas of each critic it is quite fair, noting their errors as well. Each chapter has a quotation, main thinker and the context. I’ll go by chapter.

1. “The roguery practised in this department is beyond imagination” William Bolts and the East India Company William Bolts was a Dutch-born factor for the East India Company in Bengal (mid-18th century). He was shocked by the company’s corruption, monopolistic abuses, and devastating economic and human impact in India, their role in the Bengal famine. His 1772 book Considerations on India Affairs was a scathing critique of the Company’s exploitative colonial capitalism.

2. “The mean rapacity, the monopolising spirit of merchants and manufacturers” Adam Smith on Colonial Capitalism and Slavery Adam Smith, known as the father of modern economics, authored The Wealth of Nations (1776), where he praised free markets but sharply criticized mercantilism, including colonial monopolies like the East India Company, and the slave economy. He argued that slavery was inefficient in the long run and highlighted the global economic impacts of colonialism and the triangular trade. At the same time he was very suspicious about entrepreneurs, who often join to form cartels
3. “On the brink for the last struggle” The Logic of the Luddites The Luddites were early 19th-century English skilled textile workers who resisted mechanization that threatened their livelihoods by smashing machinery. They weren’t anti-progress or anti-technology, but they were against their traditional source of income destroyed, which has clear analogues with potential destruction of jobs by AI.
4. “It is time … to seek for a radical, a permanent cure of the evils that afflict society” William Thompson’s Utilitarian Socialism William Thompson was an Irish social reformer and early socialist (pre-Marist) thinker who combined utilitarianism and labor theory of value to argue for equality and cooperative communities. His Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness (1824) laid early foundations for socialism, gender equality, and critiqued capitalist exploitation and social injustice.
5. “In speaking of the degraded position of my sex” Anna Wheeler and the Forgotten Half of Humanity Anna Wheeler was an Irish feminist and intellectual associate of William Thompson who campaigned for women’s equality and rights in the early 19th century. She influenced Thompson’s Appeal of One Half the Human Race, Women (1825), a pioneering feminist work demanding equal civil, political, and economic rights for women, sharply criticizing marriage laws and social norms.
6. “Abandon your isolation: unite with each other!” Flora Tristan and the Universal Workers’ Union Flora Tristan was a French-Peruvian early socialist and feminist who advocated for the formation of a universal workers’ union, including men and women. Her 1838 The Workers’ Union argued for class unity and women’s emancipation as essential for social revolution. Her estranged husband assaulted and shot her, but she survived.
7. “One of the shabbiest Gospels ever preached on Earth” Thomas Carlyle on Mammon and the Cash Nexus Thomas Carlyle was a British historian and social critic who depicted industrial capitalism as a soulless, mechanical system dominated by money (“Mammon”) rather than morals. His works condemned laissez-faire economics, commercial greed, and predicted social crisis and authoritarian rule as capitalism’s outcome. He was a right-wing critic of capitalism, calling for good old rustic times.
8. “The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged” Friedrich Engels and The Communist Manifesto finally, first Marxists and their views, as well as the fact that after the Communist Manifesto, in 1850, his family firm bought a second mill. As a junior partner, Engels received a generous salary plus a share of the firm’s profits. He kept two houses—one for himself and one for Lizzy—and regularly mailed cash to Marx, allocating over half his annual income to the Marx family. And none of them even mentioned that over time they exploited more and more workers!
9. “Our friend, Moneybags” Karl Marx’s Capitalist Laws of Motion on the Capital the book, its main ideas, including shifting to (even quite simplistic) formulas instead of just words.
10. “We must make land common property” Henry George’s Moral Crusade Henry George was an American political economist and reformer who thought that a true struggle was was labor vs capital, but they both vs land owners and the higher is productivity the more expensive is land. Therefore, he proposed the Single Tax on land value, arguing land rent extraction was the root cause of poverty and inequality.
11. “The ideal pecuniary man is like the ideal delinquent” Thorstein Veblen and the Captains of Industry Thorstein Veblen an American economist and sociologist most known for The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), where he analyzed conspicuous consumption and waste among the wealthy. At the same time, in “Some Neglected Points in the Theory of Socialism,” (1891), he said that recent capitalist development had brought about “the most rapid advance in average wealth and industrial efficiency that the world has seen,” along with a substantial “amelioration of the lot of the less favored.” Although Veblen did acknowledge the growing attraction to socialism in some quarters, he attributed it to “envy” and “jealousy” driven by a desire for “economic emulation.”

12. “A particularly crude form of capitalism” John Hobson’s Theory of Imperialism John A. Hobson was a British economist. His Imperialism: A Study (1902), arguing imperialism was driven by surplus capital and underconsumption at home and constantly needs to capture new markets.
13. “Capital knows no other solution to the problem than violence” Rosa Luxemburg on Capitalism, Colonialism, and War Rosa Luxemburg a Polish-Jewish Marxist revolutionary thinker who critiqued capitalism’s need to expand into noncapitalist societies through imperialism (The Accumulation of Capital, 1913).
14. “The rhythm of long cycles” Nikolai Kondratiev and the Dynamics of Capitalist Development Nikolai Kondratiev was a Russian economist and a pupil of Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky, the Ukrainian economist. He extended his tutor’s idea of “long waves” or cycles of roughly 50 years in capitalist economies driven by technological innovation and capital accumulation. Sadly, cannot be statistically proven because from the 1800s to his time just like 2.5 waves.
15. “The more troublous the times, the worse does a laissez-faire system work” John Maynard Keynes’s Blueprint for Managed Capitalism the Keynesians idea that to stop free markets from failing, government interventions are needed.
16. “The time was ripe for the fascist solution” Karl Polanyi’s Warnings About Capitalism and Democracy Karl Polanyi, a Hungarian economic historian and social theorist whose The Great Transformation (1944) argued that laissez-faire capitalism was a utopian ideal enforced by the state and that market self-regulation destroys society. “if Socialism is not to be, democracy must go. This is the raison d’être of the Fascist movements in Europe.” He wrote in 1935. “The popular resentment against Liberal Capitalism is thus turned most effectively against Socialism without any reflection on Capitalism in its non-Liberal, i.e., corporative, [fascist] forms.”
17. “The bankruptcy of reform” Two Skeptics of Keynesianism Paul Sweezy and Michał Kalecki Paul Sweezy and Michał Kalecki, Marxist economists who recognized Keynesianism’s technical validity but doubted democratic capitalism’s political capacity to sustain full employment. Capital want to have labor under control, so it can allow for crises, which hit workers more and makes them easier to control
18. “Economics once more became political economy” Joan Robinson and the “Bastard Keynesians” Joan Robinson was a Marxist British economist who challenged both neoclassical economics and orthodox Keynesianism, developing theories of imperfect competition. ‘Useful idiot’, she was convinced that state-led industrialization was the most viable way for underdeveloped countries to grow therefore she defended Stalin into the 1950s and 1960s as well as after visiting China in 1967, she wrote a sympathetic short book on the first stages of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, which she described as “a popular rising.” At the same time, she is noted as the first Marxist of note, who dismissed the labor theory of value, which Marx had used extensively, saying it “fails to provide a theory of prices”
19. “Nature … faithful and submissive to those who respect her” J. C. Kumarappa and the Economics of Permanence Birth of environmental economics. He was an Indian economist and Gandhi associate who advocated decentralized, self-sufficient rural economies based on sustainable use of natural resources and cooperative village industries. His Economy of Permanence (1957) is a foundational text in ecological economics and anti-industrialism.
20. “Vast sugar factories owned by a camarilla of absentee capitalist magnates and worked by a mass of alien proletarians” Eric Williams on Slavery and Capitalism the Trinidadian historian and politician whose Capitalism and Slavery (1944) argued that profits from the slave trade and Caribbean plantations helped finance Britain’s industrial revolution.
21. “The periphery of the economic system” The Rise and Fall of Dependency Theory in Latin America Raúl Prebisch, Andre Gunder Frank, Theotônio Dos Santos, Walter Rodney, theorists who argued that Latin America’s underdevelopment was caused by its subordinate position in the global capitalist system, relying on primary exports and foreign capital. Their solution – self-sufficiency, high tariffs, subsidize industry.
22. “Shock treatment” Milton Friedman and the Rise of Neoliberalism finally, a free market advocate who popularized monetarism and deregulation. His Capitalism and Freedom (1962). Here he is shown mostly as US Republicans know him, not a word of his support of a universal guaranteed income. The author doesn’t believe that he saved GB and US from stagnation, only that his fight with trade unions and support of capital increased inequality.
23. “Any use of the natural resources for the satisfaction of non-vital needs means a smaller quantity of life in the future” Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen and the Limits to Growth Romanian-American economist who founded ecological economics with The Entropy Law and the Economic Process (1971), highlighting physical limits to growth via thermodynamics and resource depletion, stressing that perpetual growth is impossible.
24. “A true masterpiece at the expense of women” Silvia Federici and Wages for Housework the Italian feminist who co-founded the international Wages for Housework movement in the 1970s, arguing for recognition and payment of unpaid domestic labor essential to capitalism. Her Wages Against Housework (1975) stresses that unpaid women housework is the foundation of capitalism. What I haven’t understood from this chapter is who should pay their wages.
25. “It is a form of regressive modernisation” Theorists of Thatcherism: Stuart Hall vs. Friedrich Hayek Stuart Hall and Hayek
Achievements/Works: Hall, a cultural theorist, analyzed Thatcherism as reactionary modernization, combining cultural and economic shifts to dismantle trade unions and reshape British capitalism. Friedrich Hayek influenced Thatcher’s anti-union and pro-market policies, warning of socialism’s dangers.
26. “Social disintegration is not a spectator sport” Parsing Globalization: Samir Amin, Dani Rodrik, and Joseph Stiglitz leftist economists who critiqued globalization’s inequalities, dependency, and financial instability.
27. “A historically unprecedented situation” Thomas Piketty and Rising Inequality French economist whose Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013) documented historic rises in wealth and income inequality, especially among the top 1%,
28. “A confluence that could propel a new paradigm” The End of Capitalism, or the Beginning?

[Léonie Galaxie · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Cassidy has delivered an exceptionally timely and intellectually rigorous survey that serves as both an accessible primer on economic history and a thoughtful response to contemporary concerns about capitalism's future. Drawing on his expertise as a staff writer at The New Yorker, Cassidy has crafted a comprehensive examination that will enlighten both general readers and those already familiar with economic theory.

What makes this book particularly valuable is Cassidy's broad and inclusive approach to capitalism's critics. By encompassing everyone from the Luddites and Karl Marx to dependency theorists and modern economists, he creates a rich tapestry of dissenting voices that spans centuries and continents. This comprehensive scope allows readers to understand how critiques of capitalism have evolved and adapted to changing economic conditions, providing essential context for today's debates.

Cassidy excels at identifying and analyzing watershed moments in economic history, presenting them with clarity and insight that makes complex theoretical concepts accessible to a wide audience. His ability to document these pivotal periods while maintaining analytical rigor demonstrates both his journalistic skills and his deep understanding of economic thought. The book succeeds brilliantly in helping readers understand not just what critics have said about capitalism, but why their concerns emerged when they did.

Perhaps most importantly, Cassidy's work opens up space for readers to imagine genuine alternatives to current economic arrangements. Rather than dismissing criticism or defending the status quo, he presents diverse perspectives with fairness and nuance, allowing readers to engage seriously with fundamental questions about how economies should be organized. This is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand both the historical development of capitalism and the intellectual foundations of contemporary economic debates.

[Madison ✨ (mad.lyreading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I once mentioned being anti-capitalist to my liberal aunt and she was shocked at the concept of someone not being pro-capitalist. I do not know a lot about economics, I just know the system as it is currently does not work and is actively hurting the majority of people, so I wanted to give it a read to have a bit more behind my anti-capitalist arguments than just, "It's not fair!" This book is dense, and a bit of a tough read. This is not narrative non-fiction (think Empire of Pain by Patrick Radden Keefe) and will take quite a bit of brain power to get through. However, as someone who has not taken an economics course since AP Macroeconomics in 9th grade (for which I was NOT YET READY), I was able to generally follow the critiques being conveyed to me.

Capitalism and Its Critics is a chonky book of 28 chapters, each of which follows a different theorist or theory in chronological order. While it is technically global in scope, with chapters on theorists in India and South America, it mostly focuses on Britain and the United States. You will also be treated to the delights of Reagan and Thatcher, because you can't critique capitalism without critiquing them. While I mostly read this book straight through, often with 2 or 3 chapters in one sitting, I think this book could easily be used for a college or graduate-level course, with each chapter supplemented with material by the theorists discussed. These chapters are a great introduction to the basics of these theorists/theories, and I think it would generally make the material easier to understand (I say having read almost none of these theorists myself).

One thing I appreciated about this book was that the author confronted the aspects of the theorists that go against their own theories, such as their open bigotry. It is easy to fall for the trap of idolizing someone for something great they did, but we need to remember that people generally suck and while they can do great things, they can also do great harm.

This is not a book I would recommend lightly, but if you're interested in this deep dive, I'd say take the plunge.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus, & Giroux and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

[Leonard Singer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top flight survey and commentary regarding the arguments of economists regarding capitalism (about which there is no universally accepted definition) and competing doctrines. Economics may be viewed as a quantitative study. But economic activity is the product of human character (good and bad) in the context of how myriad cultures address production and consumption during constantly unique periods of political and natural history. Try as they may, economists cannot identify a perfect economic system.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kinda dry in the middle, but overall a solid contribution.

[Margaret Heller · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mini course in economic history, weaving together connections through thinkers in a page-turner kind of way that you wouldn't think this type of book would be.

[Dale · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you enjoy in-depth history about economic you will love this book. Well researched and very detailed account of capitalism and competing philosophies.

[Jolanta (knygupė)]

25%

[Melle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly accessible combination of economic history and biography

[John Coupland · Rating 5 out of 5]

Capitalism: “Any market based system where the means of production were owned by private proprietors who hired managers and workers” or “widespread mobilization of capital and production for profit an environment of secure property rights”).

A good “big history” needs to find a good place to stand to observe its subject and here the author has made an excellent choice. A history of capitalism - merchant, plantation and industrial - from the perspectives of its critics. He uses this to tell the changing story of capitalist societies from the colonial exploitation of the East India Company in the eighteenth century, the industrial revolution in the nineteenth, to new-wave imperialism at the end of that century and the start of the twentieth, world wars, the global periphery, social liberalism, Keynes, neo-liberalism and environmentalism. I loved it. It was accessible and hit in that sweet spot where I’m interested but ignorant.
Some of the main characters discussed at more length than is useful in a review but as these are my only notes on the book it might help me to remember them. (quotes in parentheses from the writer discussed).

• William Bolts (1738-1808)– against the corruption of the East India Company. Using political and military hegemony to gain commercial advantage

• Adam Smith (1723-1790) – pro-free markets but against colonial capitalism, monopolies, and mercantilism. Invisible hand if market is working well. Division of labor. (‘One man draws out the wire; another straights it; a third cuts it; a fourth points it; a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head; to make the head requires two or three distinct operations; to put it on is a peculiar business; to whiten the pins is another; it is even a trade by itself to put them into the paper; and the important business of making a pin is, in this manner, divided into about eighteen distinct operations, which, in some manufactories, are all performed by distinct hands, though in others the same man will sometimes perform two or three of them.”)

• Ned Ludd (1810s) – breaking machines and the conservation of the old economic order

• William Thompson (1775-1833) and Anna Wheeler (1780-1848) – early nineteenth century, cooperatives and utilitarianism, women’s rights: Bentham and James Mill, Fourier’s Phalanx, Robert Owens in New Lanark and New Harmony.

• Flora Tristan (1803-1844)– a universal union of working men and women in France

• Thomas Carlisle (1795-1881)- The capitalist system has reduced human interactions to cash transactions and laissez faire. Economic progress and democracy can’t save us; we need an enlightened aristocracy

• Marx (1818-1883) and Engels (1820-1895)– economic critique of the early factory capitalism in England. Bourgeoise vs. Proletariat and the coming revolution. Engels writing in the 1840s saw (in the Communist Party Manifesto) things differently than Marx did in the 50s and 60s (Capital). The immiseration thesis: “all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the laborer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage to a machine, destroy every remnant of charm in his work and turn it into a hated toil;”

• Henry George (1839-1997)– An American perspective. The importance of land, landlords and rent

• Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)– Gilded Age, monopolies, conspicuous consumption. Capitalists involved in production (good) vs. parasitic capitalists (advertising, finance).

• John Hobson (1858-1940) – critique of early twentieth century colonialism as a hijacking of democratic processes and military might to build markets for wealthy industrialists and financiers in circumstances when poverty in the home markets limits the purchase of industrial goods.

• Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) – Updating Marx to account for current trends in capitalism and especially colonialism (capitalism must expand), Lenin, real revolutions with guns. Fascinating how they were involved in academic research while doing practical revolutionary politics. Marxists seem very committed to building some great theory to explain how the world is behaving as it is evolving.

• Nikolai Kondratiev (1892-1938) – long cycles in capitalism and the challenges of doing academic research in a totalitarian state. Struck again by how invested many in the Soviet leadership were in the details of economic theory/dogma.

• John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) – sitting in Cambridge (and Versailles and Breton Woods) trying to save capitalism (and liberty) with monetary policy and government spending. Sets up the best thirty years in the history of global capitalism.

• Karl Polani (1886-1964) – escaping Fascist Europe and pondering on the relationships between capitalism and democracy. Just because they arose at the same time does not mean they are bound together – fascism offers capitalism a horrific alternative.

• Paul Sweezy (1910-2004) and Michal Kalecki (1899-1970) - Keynesianism is vulnerable to political traps where capitalists resist full employment to retain control of workers.

• Joan Robinson (1903-1983) – Bastard Keynesians have treated the economy like a computer program. Political, historic and social factors right. We still have a lot to learn from Marx. (Also worked with Amartya Sen). (“Capitalist industry is dazzlingly efficient at producing goods to be sold in the shops, and, directly or indirectly, profits are derived from selling. The services to meet basic human needs do not lend themselves to mass production: they are not an easy field for making profits, especially as, with our egalitarian democratic notions, they have to be offered irrespective of means to pay. Consequently they must be largely provided through taxation. To supply goods is a source of profit, but to supply services is a ‘burden upon industry’. It is for this reason that when, as a nation, ‘we have never had it so good’ we find that we ‘cannot afford’ just what we most need.”)

• J.C. Kumarappa (1892-1960) – Ghandian economics in India. Trying to preserve a village-based economy avoiding the social degradation of mass production. Interesting as a potential influence of Vandana Siva. (“Regimentation certainly has its place and function where the objective is not the development of personality but some joint effort-as in an army or a factory-where each head or hand counts rather than the individual, who has to be submerged in such cases in the general interest of the goal, which is the all absorbing and supreme consideration and the individual is only the means of attaining it. To us, the development of the individual being the objective, and the organization only the means of securing it, there can be no place for regimentation in our scheme.”)

• Eric Williams (1911-1981) – Capitalism and Slavery. Looking at the European Industrial Revolution in the context of the slave plantation economies of the Caribbean.

• Raúl Prebisch, Celso Furtado, Andre Frank – core-periphery dynamic, where wealthier nations (the core) exploit poorer nations (the periphery), leading to persistent underdevelopment. The historic contexts of capitalism in Latin America and proposing ways to achieve economic progress there. A really good section on the economic history of Argentina.

• Milton Friedman (1912-2006) – Against Keynes. The economy has a “natural” equilibrium that can be reached by minimizing government interventions. High unemployment helps control labor demands and inflation. Author is cutting about the value of Friedman’s thoughts as an economist.

• Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen (1906-1994) - Against growth. Economic activity converts low entropy natural resources into high entropy (!) consumer products and pollution. This was the first one that really brought home a question as to what the project of political economy is all about. While agreeing with the concern that natural resources are important and that infinite economic expansion is impossible it seems the people who really got behind this theory never really grappled with the consequences of zero growth or when these constraints would become important. What we got was less a solid economic model and more the use of economic language to reinforce a political preference. Perhaps that’s what political economy is all about?

• Silvia Federici (1942-) – Wages for housework. The capitalist system has chosen to ignore women’s historic contribution to the economy simply because it’s hard to measure. You can’t build Fords unless we raise babies. Often at odds with second wave feminists who felt that work outside the home was an essential part of women’s liberation.

• Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992) – Socialism requires planning and planning means state control which puts us on a road to somewhere or other. A key inspiration (along with Friedman) for Thatcherism and particularly he efforts to break trade union power and roll back regulation. The transition from post-war social democracy (Keynes) to neo-liberalism.

• Stuart Hall (1932-2014) – Reading Gramsci to argue that capitalism has a cultural component and that Thatcher’s revolution captured various non-economic elements important to segments of the British working class to gain support for her programs (anti-immigrant, law and order, popular home and stock ownership). He would be a good person to read to understand the current American administration. (“Neither Keynesianism nor Monetarism win votes in the electoral marketplace. But in the doctrines and discourses of "social market values"—the restoration of competition and personal responsibility for effort and reward, the image of the over-taxed individual, enervated by welfare coddling, his initiative sapped by handouts by the state—"Thatcherism" has found a powerful means of popularizing the principles of a Monetarist philosophy: and in the image of the welfare "scavenger" a well designed folk-devil.”)

• Amin, Rodrik, Stiglitz - The 90s saw increased globalization of the economy with the collapse of state socialism in the Soviet Union and, more importantly, the rise of China as well as India and other post-colonial Asian countries. Globalization was made possible by two technological developments - the containerization of shipping and electronic communications (internet)- which set off another one of Kondratiev’s “long waves”. Its effects were explained in terms of the correctness of Friedman/Hayek’s theories. (That’s another trouble with political economy – its claims aren’t truths that can be verified by repeated experiments). The effects included a disciplining of workers in previously poor countries got richer and challenged Western hegemony (while remaining committed to the global capitalist system). Western countries as the threat of automation and offshoring reduced labor demands while at the same time driving down the cost of goods in those countries. At the same time globalization reduced the capacity of states to tax capital as it became easier to move to low-tax countries (Ireland, Singapore). Taken together these two factors make globalized capitalism unpopular in western democracies and lead to increased demands for trade restrictions. This brings nicely us to our current crisis.

• Thomas Piketty (1971-) – inequality is growing and becoming unsustainable in a democracy. The period 1914-1980 was an exception and now neoliberalism and globalization has helped the very rich by giving them levers to control democracy and hence tax policy, enforcement of property rights, and regulation of financial markets. It has not benefited either the poorest in the world or the poor in rich countries. Oligarchy of the 0.1%. (Marx and Engels: “The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”) This brings us nicely to our current crisis.

And what comes next? Capitalism has been with us for 250 years, lurching from crisis to crisis yet never quite collapsing. (The idea of sudden collapse should terrify all of us. We eat because truck drivers, and factory workers, and farmers we will never meet trust the system enough to show up for work every morning. If they stopped, we would be in anarchy in a week and we might not come back). Today’s challenges include the losers from globalization, the cooption of political power by oligarchs, and new general purpose technologies that might (or might not) be as transformative as the steam engine, the shipping container, or the internet. And climate change. These are all new problems, but at the same time not new. Many of the critics of capitalism across its history have worried about related issues and this book provides a useful collection of their ideas.

[S Ashok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Capitalism the economic system that we take for granted in the twentieth century evolved over a period of two centuries. Philosophers, economists, have been baffled by this system, they have tried to understand it and their criticisms have helped it evolve it to what we see it today. In the early years of capitalism when it evolved in the United Kingdom, it was very different to what we see today. In the early years the companies such as the British East India company were involved in exploitation of colonies and were themselves not creating much value more than buying goods from the colonies they controlled in the colonies and selling them in their home country. This phase is called as mercantile capitalism, this was a precursor to the industrial capitalism that evolved in the 18th century. Even as industrial capitalism began in the 18th century, the working conditions were draconian, workers were paid so little, children and women worked for more than 14 hours, the capitalists controlled the government, and common working class people had no rights. Hence as you see much has changed over the years, capitalism has shape shifted so much over the years. It has adapted , made changes and evolved as it faced challenges. In this book, each chapter covers the various critiques of capitalism over its existence in the last two centuries. The book is deeply researched and each chapter shows the historical evolution.
To broadly categorize the criticisms,

1. Economic criticisms :
Right from the earlier times scholars have wondered about the economic difference of capitalism compared to the feudal world it replaces. It is characterized by profit motive, it seems to be extremely unstable. These aspects have been criticised by various scholars from Thompson, Marx and Engels, Keynes etc. Capitalism tendency to profit maximisation results in its exploitative tendencies, one way it creates its profits is by undercutting wages and keeping the working class in poverty. This creates a dilemma if the working class are going to be in a state of pverty who buys the things the capitalists are producing. In the earlier years this has resulted in capitalistic countries searching for new markets and trying to sell to markets outside of capitalistic production. This has created cycles of boom and bust where economic growth is characterized by depression resulting in loss of work and employment. This has been characterized as the major contradiction of capitalism by Marx and Engles which as per them will eventually resulting in the overthrow of the system itself by a workers revolution. Others in the Marxian tradition like Roxa Luxembourg have tried to understand how imperialism as an inevitable part of capitalism. Roxa Luxembourg argues that a capitalistic system will always need colonial markets to sell its surplus. Economists like Keynes also have identified this instability of Laissez faire capitalism, and he argues that monetary policies, government spending can boost demand there by maintaining a healthy economy. Post Keynesian marxists have questioned whether the state which is to a large extent controlled by capitalists can go against their class interest by spending heavily and boosting demand by raising taxes against the rich.

Social Criticisms
Capitalism also drastically changes the social dynamics compared to the earlier economic systems. It reduces the individual to a state of isolation where they are dislocated from their homes and forced to live in large cities where traditional systems of support are non-existent. The earlier socialstic critiques have shown how this creates lot of issues at the socieatal level. They call for the unity of labour, especially women who are forced to work in factories face the added challenge of managing the families and also to work for lower wages. The pathetic conditions of working in the earlier states of industrial capitalism resulted in diseases and ailments wgainst which the working class was powerless. These early socialists called for the unity among the working class, they also wish to setup a socialist society not based on violence but one where people voluntarily cooperate to produce what is needed and take care of each other. This utopian dream never came to be adapted in large numbers but these idealistic socislists endeavours brough in much needed changes in the conditions of the working class especially women.

Moral Criticism
There are also scholars whoc questioned the morality of the system itself, its elevation of materialism and profit motive, its rampant over consumption, the destruction of nature, its need for endless growth etc. Important among them are JC Kumarappa and other proponents of degrowth economics who wished to prirotise human welfare over ever increasing needs. They questioned the systems ever increasing need of resources such as fossil fuels, they also questioned how the individual person is alienated in this system of work where they dont seem to gain any spiritual value out of labour. They also questioned how the seemingly permanent growth is based on transient resources and does not seem to add anything to human happiness.

Historical Criticism
In addition to it there are also criticisms raised from colonial countries which suffered immensely during the early stages of industrial capitalism. Eric Williams argues that how the early years of capitalism were seed funded by slavery. How colonial exploitation was fundamental to the rise of capitalism in the west. In a simillar way Silvia Federici have argued how women work in the family is central to capitalism growth as home provides for the labour of men.

This book is a masterful achievement.

[Phen · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is essentially an ensemble of quotes from various notable economic writers thrown together with some extra commentary by John. It’s a solid and interesting lineup of writers he picks for discussion, but very little meaningful commentary from him other than some historical context around the quotes.

From the get-go he proves to be a somewhat unreliable narrator, ending his section on Adam Smith by saying “if mercantilism was a form of capitalism - and it surely was - smith was a noted critic of capitalism as well as its greatest philosopher.” Dubious as best 🙄, so maybe constraining the book to quoting infamous writers is a blessing after all.

[Paul Sand · Rating 3 out of 5]

This fat tome was on the New Non-Fiction table at Portsmouth (NH) Public Library. I could tell it would be out of my ideological comfort zone, but I promised myself that I'd venture there every so often. It's very long, 518 pages of main text. And it turned out to be packed with dull-but-earnest prose with plenty of details in which I can't imagine anyone would be interested. [Page 240, picked at random, about the early USSR: "NKFin [the People's Commissariat of Finance] was headed by Grigory Sokolnikov, a veteran Bolshevik who had been an early associate of Nikolai Bukharin, a Marxist theorist who was a prominent party figure." If you made it to the end of that sentence without wishing you were doing something else, good for you.]

But I worked my way through it, admittedly in "looked at every page" mode at some points.

To be fair, the author, John Cassidy, demonstrates a wide range of meticulous research into economic and social history, spanning centuries, across the globe. Although his sympathies are clearly with capitalism's critics, his basic theme can't help but admit that various flavors of "capitalism" have been the dominant force pulling billions of people out of poverty in a historical eye-blink. (He doesn't do a lot of graphs, but he provides a "hockey stick" one early on that's simple but revealing.

The book cover lists many of the "critics" he discusses: William Bolts, the Luddites, Adam Smith, William Thompson, Anna Wheeler, Flora Tristan, Karl Marx, Thomas Carlyle, Friedrich Engels, Henry George, John Hobson, Thorstein Veblen, Rosa Luxemburg, Nikolai Kondratiev, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Polanyi, John Maynard Keynes, Michal Kalecki, Joan Robinson, J.C. Kumarappa, Eric Williams, Raul Frebisch, Milton Friedman, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Silvia Frederici, Stuart Hall, Samir Amin, and Thomas Piketty.

You may have not heard of all those people.

So, you'll note: Cassidy discusses a few capitalist champions (Adam Smith and Milton Friedman) not just critics. (Hayek gets some discussion as well, mostly as an inspiration to Maggie Thatcher.)

That's not to say that Cassidy is even-handed. He refers (p. 392) to the "cult of [Milton] Friedman", and it's hard to avoid detecting a note of disparagement there. I didn't notice (for example) any reference to the "cult of Marx", and I think that's probably more apt.

Some of the "critics" launched movements that sputtered out pretty quickly. Chapter 24 is titled "Silvia Frederici and Wages for Housework". A movement "demanding payment from the government for domestic labor." Presumably this wouldn't involve periodic surprise inspections to ensure that dishes were being washed promptly, laundry carefully dried and folded, and mantels being diligently dusted.

Later in that chapter, "Italian leftist" Mariarosa Della Costa is quoted: "In the same way as women are robbed of the possibility of developing their creative capacity, they are robbed of their sexual life which has been transformed into a function for reproducing labour power. […] Either the vagina is primarily the passage to the reproduction of labour power sold as a commodity, the capitalist function of the uterus, or it is part of our natural powers, our social equipment."

It was the 70s, man.

I tend to be attuned to University of New Hampshire connections when reading. I found three: (1) Marxist Paul Sweezy gets an extended discussion, but not his SCOTUS case, Sweezy v. New Hampshire, which turned on his refusal to answer the NH Attorney General's questions about a lecture he gave at UNH in 1954. (2) UNH Econ prof Dennis Meadows gets some ink as one of the contributors to the predictions of ecological doom in the book The Limits to Growth. And (3) "wages-for-housework" activist Margaret Prescod gets a brief mention; for some reason I knew that she is the mother of UNH Physics prof Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.

So, even though there's lots of capitalism-criticism here, what shines through is a mutation of that old oft-mangled Churchill quote: capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.

[Lily Evangeline · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Money, social prestige, the bureaucracy, and the armed forces of the state, the channels of public communication—all these are controlled by capital, and they are being and will continue to be used to the utmost to maintain the position of capital.” Given this stranglehold, there was little prospect of lasting changes in policy. Should any serious threat emerge, the capitalists would buy off reformist leaders, and media propaganda would keep the masses in check. “The outcome is not the reform of capitalism, but the bankruptcy of reform,” Sweezy concluded. “This is neither an accident nor a sign of the immorality of human nature; it is a law of capitalist politics." "

“But Robinson insisted there was another issue to be considered, an even deeper one: “Whether capitalism, even when prosperous, can provide us with what we really want.”61 To live a fulfilling life, she pointed out, people needed decent housing, reliable healthcare, and a good education, but “growing wealth always leaves us with a greater deficiency in just those things.” This was no accident, she insisted: it came down to economics and profits. “Capitalist industry is dazzlingly efficient at producing goods to be sold in the shops, and, directly or indirectly, profits are derived from selling,” she wrote in her New Left Review piece. “The services to meet basic human needs do not lend themselves to mass production: they are not an easy field for making profits, especially as, with our egalitarian democratic notions, they have to be offered irrespective of means to pay. Consequently, they must be largely provided through taxation.” Given the opposition of businesses and wealthy people to paying higher taxes, this created a serious problem. “To supply goods is a source of profit, but to supply services is a ‘burden upon industry.’ It is for this reason that when, as a nation, ‘we have never had it so good,’ we find that we ‘cannot afford’ just what we most need.” ”

I knew next to nothing about economics, the history of economics, or capitalism going in, so at lot of this (especially the names) just went in one ear & out the other. However, I got what I was looking for--which was a structure which with to understand how we got to where we are now, and (hopefully) the ability to have a more nuance perspective than simply "capitalism is the worst."

He takes us up to the present day in terms of critics, but doesn't off (really) any sort of solution of his own. Which, actually, I think is fine. The book speaks for itself--as does the disaster we find ourselves in today. It's an important reminder that our current economic system & world was by no means inevitable--people made choices in the context of their times, and here we are. Capitalism as we know it was by no means our destiny. And our future, bleak as it seems sometimes, is also not inevitable--it will come about because of our choices.

Also, y'all. The East India Company? That's some craziness right there. Wow.

I listened to the audiobook (of course), so that made the reading much less burdensome--it felt more like an extremely long podcast. And despite being quite heavy on the facts & covering so many topics, I found it to actually be quite engagingly written & accessible despite my inexperience.

Overall, excellent choice, Lily. I still don't know too much, but I've got so much more context. Recommended for all!

[Jared Quigg · Rating 4 out of 5]

"After he had laid out the huge income gaps that characterized Victorian England, Marx quoted the liberal politician William Gladstone, who had recently remarked: 'While the rich have been growing richer, the poor have been growing less poor.' 'How lame an anti-climax!' Marx continued. 'If the working class has remained 'poor,' only 'less poor' in proportion as it produces for the wealthy class an 'intoxicating augmentation of wealth and power' then it has remained relatively just as poor. If the extremes of poverty have not lessened, they have increased because the extremes of wealth have.' In other words, relative immiseration has increased."
--John Cassidy, "Capitalism and Its Critics"

The colder months are for big books, and I had been wanting to read this one for some time. It's good news for the movement that opposition to capitalism is growing so strong that liberals like John Cassidy cannot help but write about anti-capitalist figures.

The problem with Cassidy's book is that the sympathy he has for such figures largely consists of roads not taken. He chides the Bolsheviks as authoritarian, instead reserving praise for a Socialist Revolutionary; Lenin mostly takes a backseat to Rosa Luxemburg; the Georgists would seem much more prescient than the Marxists -- the list goes on. Cassidy, like many liberals, only has praise for the revolutions that failed, and would rather shun the ones that actually captured power.

But, aside from this, "Capitalism and Its Critics" is a book that I enjoyed reading, a book I learned from, and a book that I'd recommend to others. Some of my favorite chapters were about the Luddites, or about the utopian socialists, and I appreciated Cassidy's knowledge of the Keynesians, a school of thought he seems to uphold the most.

What I most enjoyed, despite his skepticism of 20th century Marxism, was that he took capitalism's critics very seriously, and faithfully expounded upon their views. Amazingly, despite providing 50 reasons or more to oppose capitalism, he himself seems to remain not fully convinced. One gets the impression that Cassidy simply wants to reform capitalism, make it kinder. One of the major themes of the book is the system's resilience, and this resilience seems to prevent him from believing that a post-capitalist world is even possible. I feel sorry for him in this respect.

[Cgallozzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book.

This excellent book provides a 'history of Capitalism' - through the eyes of its (Capitalism's) critics.

This book also indicates that Capitalism has reformed itself several times so as to address some of the criticisms made against it. An open question remaining is whether Capitalism can again reform itself to deal with current and future challenges such as sustainable environmental focus; broad distribution of A I and its economic and social impacts, the alleged retreat of Globalization and the global debt problem. For perspective on this issue - The Communist Manifesto thought Capitalism would not be able to reform itself when the book was written in the 1840's.

Cassidy details a broad list of Capitalism's critics - Socialists, Conservatives, John Maynard Keynes, Thomas Piketty and even zero growth/degrowth advocates.

Many many criticisms of (the negative impacts of Capitalism) remain relevant today - income inequality and the environmental impact of fossil fuel led growth among others.

I read this book as a compendium of Economic thoughts/ideologies - detailing mainstream Capitalism's successes and failures and discussing its critics and their thought models. A great learning experience for those interested in historical and contemporary Economics.

You need to 'pay attention' while reading (listening) this book.

I've read several of the texts authored by the named Critics (Piketty for one) - I find Cassidy's summary of Piketty's thoughts generally 'on the mark'. I find the overall tone 'balanced' with several critics - generating criticism from the right; critics from the left; and critics who are anarchists/revolutionaries - all are fairly represented here.

In the context of a discussion of economic thought and criticism - it is a very well written and well researched book. I highly recommend this book - it should be of interest to those who read economics.

Carl Gallozzi
Cgallozzi@comcast.net

[Julio The Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Capitalism and baseball: Deep in this book John Cassidy remarks that critics of capitalism fall into two categories, likening them to people who attend a baseball game: Some are there to root for one team over the other, others come to tear down the stadium. Since he squarely puts himself in the first category there is not much bite or suspense in this sweeping survey of capitalism and its discontents. Cassidy is of the "mend it, don't end it" party. He equates capitalism with an economic system "that is profit driven". Wrong. The pharaohs of Egypt and Roman emperors strove for profits, that didn't make them capitalists. Comrade Cassidy also thinks capitalism means only European capitalism. Wrong again. Without the profits derived from the Spanish and Portuguese conquest of the New World and the African slave trade there would have been no industrial revolution in Europe, and since Cassidy devotes a chapter to Eric Williams' classic study CAPITALISM AND SLAVERY, which documents this very thesis, he has no excuse for ignoring the American and African roots of capitalism. Erratum number three: Cassidy believes capitalism is only an economic system. Ha! Conservative critics of capitalism, including Thomas Carlyle in his bucolics for England, William Faulkner in his short story "The Bear", Robert Penn Warren and other Agrarian critics in "I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition", and Daniel Bell (THE CULTURAL CONTRADICTIONS OF CAPITALISM) have expounded at length on the alienating effects of the free market and commodification. I, for one, am glad Cassidy introduced me to the Wages for Housework Campaign; a push by feminists to recognize and reward household work by women and other caregivers, but that is a pearl among swine. If you are willing to overlook all his faults by all means read Cassidy, but you won't gain much insight into capitalism or its most pungent critics.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a staff writer for The New Yorker, Cassidy profiles dozens of the most vocal and powerful critics of capitalism, documenting its history from the East India Company to the era of artificial intelligence. The fundamental criticisms of capitalism, according to Cassidy, have not changed much over the centuries: it is "soulless, exploitative, inequitable, unstable, and destructive," but it is also "all-conquering and overwhelming."

In addition to well-known figures like Thomas Piketty, John Maynard Keynes, Rosa Luxemburg, and Karl Marx, the story also discusses lesser-known but equally important critics like the Luddites, Irish proto-socialist William Thompson, French unionist Flora Tristan, conservative Thomas Carlyle, and Indian economist J. C. Kumarappa.

Capitalism's "remarkable knack for reinventing itself" and its astounding "powers of self-regeneration and survivability," which have enabled it to weather multiple crises and evade the ultimate collapse that some of its detractors had predicted, are fundamental themes.

Since growing inequality, climate change, and artificial intelligence raise serious concerns about the viability and ethics of the current economic system, the book is positioned as a work that is relevant to the times. According to Cassidy, the prevailing ideologies of free-market neoliberalism and Keynesian social democracy are "running aground," so it is critical to find alternatives.
According to reviews, the book humanizes what is sometimes a dry subject matter by combining a lively examination of economic theories, a comprehensive history, and a rich biography.

[Graham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Exhaustively researched, John Cassidy digs into the many many critics of capitalism during its heyday as the dominant economic system on the planet.

I particularly appreciated the way the book highlights a lot of thinkers who are not as well-known. You are, of course, going to get Marx and Engels and Piketty, the classic and contemporary heavyweights. But particularly in the early era, you get very interesting Victorian socialists and imperial critics whose arguments resonate through time, while the more modern era gives a number of post-colonial theorists room to shine.

It's really impossible to summarize all 20+ thinkers here, but if there's a throughline, I think it's the continued focus on inequality. The "rising tide lifts all boats" argument for capitalism has been made, as you see in this book, ever since Richard Arkwright first put machine powered spinning wheels in his factory and burnt the midnight oil (literally!) to keep the looms making cloth 24/7. And yet the only thing that has consistently trickled down to the lower classes has been the blood on their foreheads from the truncheon of both private and state police.

Capitalism and Its Critics stands as a wonderfully readable summary of these critiques, and I think its real contribution is the robust citations and resources it provides a reader to learn more specifics and to craft their own arguments.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book introduced me to a variety of perspectives regarding capitalism that I hadn't considered in the past and a number of economists/analysts that I'd not heard of previously. Nevertheless I was left thinking the author was exceptionally guarded in his presentation of the information. Academic neutrality or impartiality? Perhaps. But the title, other than mildly in the final chapter, does one sense a true openness to criticism the dominate economic system responsible for so much inequality and environmental destruction.

Perhaps it was a stereotypical British understatement that I didn't accept. The issues discussed do not warrant or accept such a mild approach if indeed that was the author's intent. As we move further into late-stage capitalism with few models for stepping away from it, perhaps the book's failings to present a viable alternative -- other than run of the mill academic criticism -- is all we can/should expect from the complicit.

So does one need to read this book? Not if you're already paying attention. It did provide the history of discontents, but demonstrates, perhaps unintentionally, their ineptitude and impotence to offer anything to prevent the continuing dissent to despair already upon us.

[Brayden · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a great overview of industrial and political capitalism from its inception in the 17th century to its current form in the first part of 2025. The book can be quite densely packed with information at times, and with so many different critical being discussed it can be hard to keep them all straight, but I think this only adds to the book's value as an amazing resource. While it is clear through reading the book that the author discusses some forms of capitalism more optimistically than others, this seems more tied to the facts that some forms simply performed more equitably than others. Unlike many other grand critics, this author does not take a position of being a hard-line capitalist, nor a stark adherent to non-capitalist systems, and I think this is a good thing. He demonstrates both the strengths and weaknesses of the ideology, and provides sufficient economic theory and evidence for these qualities where it is fitting. All-in-all I'm glad to have read this book and would be overjoyed to recommend it to anyone who looks at the current state of our modern and economy with distaste and wonders "how did we get here?"

[Kent Winward · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just combed through three books: Capitalism and Its Critics: A History: From the Industrial Revolution to AI, Capitalism: A Global History, and The History of Money: A Story of Humanity, which created an odd synthesis of the push-pull or dare I say, the supply-demand of capitalism's evolution.

Coupled with the history of money, it quickly becomes apparent that money and capitalism are profoundly human and as human creations, behave erratically, just like their creators.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a survey intellectual history of capitalism, mostly seen through the eyes of the anti-capitalists. It's a long book, but still it leaves some stuff out as the author admits. It's not meant to be comprehensive, just an overview, but Mr. Cassidy does a better than decent job of covering the major thinkers and trends, even if it is lacking a bit in depth. It would be a good introductory piece for someone with limited knowledge, but not so good for anyone who has already read extensively in this area.

It had some value for me as a bibliography, checking the boxes of some important books that I still need to read, starting with Karl Polanyi's "Great Transformation," W.E.B Du Bois' "Black Reconstruction In America," Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Business Enterprise" and Donella Meadows' "Limits to Growth". There were a lot more that seemed important but were too turgid even for me.

[Riley Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is phenomenally informative but dryer than a saltine cracker. So much details, names, and dates, I could barely pay attention. But it leaves the overall impression: Capitalism as it functions today is not a forgone conclusion but a deliberately chosen path. Not a socialist history, it’s worth pointing out. There are many criticisms of a capitalist system represented here, including Christian revivalist perspectives, pro-regulation perspectives, and small-industry perspectives. For my part, I am not “anti-capitalism” by any means—but I do take seriously the ways that capitalism uniquely cooperates with the Flesh to violate the Ten Commandments. And what I do lament is capitalism’s inherent lack of community, virtue, and transcendence, in favor of scale, profit, and materialism. I found my perspective well-represented here and in history. Very insightful.

[Nicole Lintemuth · Rating 5 out of 5]

For such a dense topic this was incredibly readable and relatable. I found myself absorbed. The author did a great job of following the history of capitalism and the critics from each era while openly assessing the limitations of each theory and the ways they gave built upon previous works. I really feel like this is a book everyone, leftists especially should read while we are in this time of trying to figure out what future we want to build. We can learn lessons from the past as we create new theories and economies of the future.

if nothing else, this book gave me a solid understanding of what got us into the mess we live in today, and examples of amazing thinkers we dismissed in the past whose criticisms are still valid today.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley and Allen Lane in exchange for an honest review

A very interesting and informative book. It takes various writers and critics of capitalism over the past 200 years and provides a summary of their arguments and the context of their time. The book does a very good job of explaining their ideas in a clear and understandable manner, which isn't easy when dealing with such a complex topic. I also liked that the author didn't just mindlessly praise the wirters but was willing to point out their mistakes as well.

Initially, I had assumed the book would be full of excerpts of the writers own works and was surprised this wasn't the case. To be honest, this was a good choice as economists can write in dense language that is near impossible for non-economists to understand. Plus, the nature of discourse has changed so much over time that some of the language would be very old-fashioned.